23 July 2013, News Wires – US supermajor Chevron has inked a plethora of deals with a number of companies to provide subsea services for two large projects in the UK North Sea.
Technip and Aker Solutions are amongst the companies to have scooped the contracts which cover the Rosebank and Alder projects.
At Alder, Technip has landed the engineering, procurement, installation and commissioning job for the complete subsea system including the main manifold, the isolation valve manifold, 28 kilometres of flowlines and umbilical and tie-in spools.
Although the contract has gone to a French engineering firm, Chevron was keen to point out that the work, as with the other contracts, will be carried out in the UK – Technip will perform the work at its Aberdeen, Newcastle and Evanton facilities.
Also for Alder, Aker Solutions has landed the contract to design, build and supply the subsea control system, including the hydraulic and electrical components to be installed both at subsea and on the Britannia bridge-linked platform. Work will take place at Aker’s Aberdeen facility.
The third Alder contract when to OneSubsea UK (formerly Cameron) which will design, build and supply a pair of high pressure, high temperature vertical subsea monobore trees and wellheads. The contractor will perform the work at its Leeds facility.
OneSubsea was also the winner of the one Rosebank contract handed out by Chevron. It will engineer, build and supply subsea manifolds, trees and control systems for the project with the contract also executed from Leeds.
Chevron did not provide a breakdown of the contract values but said the total over £550 million ($844.16 million).
Chevron has called Rosebank a “significant resource”, saying it holds an estimated 698 million barrels of proven and probable standard oil in place.
The project will see the development of the Paleocene Colsay-1 South and Colsay-3 reservoirs of the Rosebank field and the potential further appraisal drilling of the greater Rosebank area, which comprises the Rosebank South, Rosebank North and Colsay-1 North reservoirs.
The start of offshore work in the form of the drilling campaign is targeted for the third quarter of 2015.
The infield infrastructure will be installed in 2015 and 2016 before the Rosebank floating production, storage and offloading vessel is installed in 2017.
Hyundai Heavy Industries said in April when it was awarded the contract to build the 99,750-tonne turret-moored FPSO that it was scheduled to be handed over by the end of November 2016. Oil production is expected to peak at 98,198 barrels per day in 2019 while peak gas production is expected at 3.8 million cubic metres per day in 2022, Chevron said.
The new development — located in 1100 metres of water, 130.5 kilometres north-west of Shetland — will also be “pre-equipped” with tie-facilities to support a number of future subsea developments if required.
Front-end engineering and design work on the FPSO, which began last year, is expected to be completed in the third quarter of this year.
Rosebank is due to be developed in three different drilling stages from four drill centres.
Operator Chevron holds a 40% interest, with Statoil on 30%, OMV on 20% and Dong on 10%.
Alder, where compatriot ConocoPhillips is also a partner, is located 27 kilometres west of the Britannia field in Block 15/29a, about 160 kilometres off the UK coast.
The high-pressure high-temperature Alder accumulation is set to be developed as a subsea tie-back to the Britannia bridge-linked platform, jointly operated by the two US supermajors.
A final investment decision on the project is expected later this year.
The maximum estimated recovery from Alder is 4.82 billion cubic metres of gas over an estimated field life of 10 years.
– Upstream